Others have repeatedly made a feature request for automated concept tagging in notes (see the end of this post).
As of now, there’s no way to automatically tag ideas (whether a given idea is expressed using one or more words) in Obsidian. Instead of adding notes and having them undergo automatic tagging, we users have to invest time into manually tagging every note we create.
As anyone can imagine, this is highly time-consuming --especially if you have a big vault, of let’s say 5GB. And it’s not clear or it’s doubtful whether there is any value to engaging in manual tagging.
What’s worse, adding the hashtags needed to create tags changes the way that notes can be searched, in making the process more complex or less accurate. For instance, searching tags and words require different inputs into search boxes.
Is there a way to automate the tagging process in Obsidian, whether using NLP tools or AI?
Startups like Flowdex are building ecosystems based primarily on making the tagging process easier. Its claim is, “Flowdex automatically tags your notes using AI so you can find what you need in a few clicks.”
Flowdex advancing this value proposition shows there’s a need for automated tagging. Some users have said they wouldn’t use Flowdex because of data storage issues (as discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalGardens/comments/w5c8fz/introducing_flowdex_a_new_way_to_organize_your/).
While Obsidian’s local storage and other plugin-enabled features are valuable, a different ecosystem can overshadow Obsidian, such as with automated tagging and much smarter search capacities (as exemplified by Google).
Will the Obsidian community respond by making tagging easier/smarter, either through a feature addition or plugin?